Thursday, October 31, 2013

In past
years, I use November to pay tribute to those we have lost and this year I
have a number of posts which do just that. Among the tributes, a pair of posts
dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the passing of Francis Poulenc,
posts highlighting performances of three conductors who passed away this year
and one last kick at the Rachmaninov double anniversary.

Friday Blog
and Podcast

November
1st: You’re
Killing Me – our All Saints Day podcast features two major works by
Schubert and Richard Strauss, as well as other “not too morbid” looks at
Death.

November
22: In
Memoriam: Yuli Turovsky – The Russian-born cellist and conductor left us a
good number of great recordings with the orchestra he founded, I Musici de
Mointréal. Works by Bartok, Boccherini and Barber.

All of our Tuesday, Friday and ad-hoc posts, as well as OTF, l'opéra du mois, Quinze que j’en pense and YouTube Channel updates get regularly mentioned (with links) on our Fan Page. If you are a user of Facebook, simply subscribe to get notified so you never miss anything we do!

Friday, October 25, 2013

As of November 22, 2013, this montage will no longer be available on Pod-O-Matic. It can be heard or downloaded from the Internet Archive at the following address / A compter du 22 novembre 2013, ce montage ne sera plus disponible en baladodiffusion Pod-O-Matic. Il peut être téléchargé ou entendu au site Internet Archive à l'adresse suivante:https://archive.org/details/Pcast128pcast128- Playlist
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English Commentary –le commentaire français suit

To conclude
our four-pack of “Back to Bach” montages, we turn to a significant portion of
the Bach catalog – his vocal works.

Although
this may sound quite simplistic, we can divide the bulk of Bach’s vocal works
into two great categories: sacred and secular works. Though Bach didn’t compose
operas, he did compensate by writing cantatas that can be staged, as well as
writing a number of monumental sacred works – the four passions come
immediately to mind here.

Two of the
works programmed today are secular cantatas (his BWV 211 and 212), and bring
you a recording featuring Jeanne Lamon and Toronto’s Tafelmusik “cover to
cover”. Tafelmusik, Canada’s
award-winning period instrument orchestra, was founded in 1979 and has long
been renowned in North America and internationally for its distinct,
exhilarating and soulful performances. Under the outstanding leadership
of Music Director Jeanne Lamon, it has excelled equally in music ranging from
the baroque and classical eras and beyond, including adventurous cross-cultural
reinventions of baroque classics. In the words of Gramophone, Tafelmusik
is “one of the world’s top baroque orchestras.”

Although
classified as a cantata, Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (in English -
Be still, stop chattering) is essentially a miniature comic opera. It amusingly
tells of an addiction to coffee. It should be noted that Bach regularly
directed a musical ensemble based at Zimmermann's coffee house called a
Collegium Musicum – an institution founded by Georg Philipp Telemann in 1702.

The cantata
text/libretto (written by Christian Friedrich Henrici, known as Picander),
suggests that some people in eighteenth-century Germany viewed coffee drinking
as a bad habit. The cantata's libretto features lines like "If I can't
drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment, I will shrivel
up like a piece of roast goat"—a sentiment that would likely have been
appreciated by the patrons of Zimmermann's Coffee House.

Mer hahn
en neue Oberkeet
(In English - We have a new governor) was originally entitled the
"Cantate burlesque" (burlesque cantata) by Bach himself, but is now
popularly known as the Peasant Cantata. This cantata's text (also by
Picander) was written for performance on 30 August 1742 on the 36th birthday of
Carl Heinrich von Dieskau, Saxon-Crown-Princely Kammerherr to the Rittergut
Kleinzschocher. Part of the birthday celebrations included a huge fireworks
display and, as was customary, Dieskau took homage from the peasants on the
same occasion. It is thought that Picander asked Bach to set his poetry to
music. In the cantata, an unnamed farmer laughs with the farmer's wife Mieke
about the tax collector's machinations while praising the economy of Dieskau's
wife, ending by especially cheering on Dieskau. In places it uses the dialect
of Upper Saxony.

Separating
the two cantatas is a single sacred work by Bach, performed in a chamber (yet
not necessarily HIP) setting by the Academy of St-Martin-in-the-Fields under
Sir Neville Marriner, augmented by a full choir and soloists.

The
Magnificat (In English - My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord), also
known as the Song of Mary or the Canticle of Mary is one of the
eight most ancient Christian hymns and perhaps the earliest Marian hymn. Its
name comes from the first word of the Latin version of the canticle's text.

The text of
the canticle is taken directly from the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:46-55) where it
is spoken by the Virgin Mary upon the occasion of her Visitation to her cousin
Elizabeth. In the narrative, after Mary greets Elizabeth, who is pregnant with
the future John the Baptist, the child moves within Elizabeth's womb. When
Elizabeth praises Mary for her faith, Mary sings what is now known as the
Magnificat in response.

Bach sets
the latin text to music for the Christmas vespers of 1723 (originally in E-flat
major [BWV 243a]), and in this “second” version, in D Major (For the Feast of
the Visitation 1733). He also set the German words in his cantata for
Visitation of 1724, Meine Seel erhebt den Herren, BWV 10.

Friday, October 18, 2013

As of November 15, 2013, this montage will no longer be available on Pod-O-Matic. It can be heard or downloaded from the Internet Archive at the following address / A compter du 15 novembre 2013, ce montage ne sera plus disponible en baladodiffusion Pod-O-Matic. Il peut être téléchargé ou entendu au site Internet Archive à l'adresse suivante:https://archive.org/details/Pcast127

Today’s
“Back to Bach” post presents three organists, three organs and three very
different works (or set of works).

Presumably
composed early in Bach's career, BWV 582 stands out as being Bach’s only
Passacaglia and Fugue (compared to the many preludes, fantasias and toccatas
and fugues found in the BWV catalog!) It is one of his most important and
well-known works, and an important influence on 19th and 20th century
passacaglias (notably, the ones by British-Canadian composer and organist HealyWillan ).

Returning
to the Bach organ catalog, eight after a set of 21 preludes and fugues for
organ, we see a set of eight “short” preludes and fugues (BWV 553-560). They
were believed for a long time to have been composed by one of Bach's pupils,
Johann Tobias Krebs, based on certain unusual characteristics of the music when
played on the organ. These pieces came to be played often on the organ in the
19th and 20th centuries, and were especially useful as teaching pieces for
beginners.

Dutch
organist and composer Piet Kee performs these works today on the Christiaan
Müller organ of the St.-Bavokerk in the Dutch city of Haarlem, one of the
world's most historically important organs, whose original construction dates
back 1735-38, thus contemporary to Bach’s lifetime.

The same
cannot be said of the 1960 Casavant et Frères organ at All Saints' Kingsway
Anglican Church in Toronto (Interestingly, the organ was entirely refurbished a
few years ago), where we have a rare performance by Glenn Gould at the organ.
Part of Gould’s training at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory (1942-46) included
organ studies under Frederick C. Silvester, and Gould was known to have
performed at Sunday services as a child.

In 1962,
Gould recorded selections from Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of the
Fugue) on the organ, and an overlapping set of selections on the piano as part
of a CBC broadcast series (in 1967 and later in 1981). The Art of the Fugue is
a monumental (unfinished) masterpiece, written in the last decade of his life.
It consists of 14 fugues and 4 canons, each using some variation of a single
principal subject, and generally ordered to increase in complexity.

"The
governing idea of the work", as Bach specialist Christoph Wolff put it, is
"an exploration in depth of the contrapuntal possibilities inherent in a
single musical subject."

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

When we began our monthly series Once Upon the Internet last year, our intent was to use it to share some of the finds we made over the years on now defunct sites, so that other music lovers could enjoy them, or add them to their digital collection.

For the next two weeks, I’m very pleased to bring you what I personally consider to be my “best ever find” through data mining, dating back almost 12 years now, from the original MP3.COM. Today’s discussion will revolve around how I found this, and a few words on the works featured this – and next – week.

The Legends Pages on MP3.COM

It may be a tad pretentious to use these terms, but the classical works available on the old MP3.COM included the works of a pair of so-called legends: Paul Badura-Skoda and Jörg Demus. We featured both these pianists on our first-ever OUTI post back in May of 2012 (playing piano four-hand pieces by Schubert).

Paul Badura-Skoda’s “legends” page included (either for streaming or for download) the complete piano sonatas by Beethoven. Since he is one of the few 20th century pianists having a musicological slant on these works, the insight gained in listening to his performances was well worth it. There were of course many other pieces offered on the page – works by Debussy, Bartok and Mozart chief among them.

The Jörg Demus “legends” page offered its own sampling of works by many composers, but his “special” contribution was a complete version of the Well-Tempered Clavier he’d recorded between 1968 and 1970, originally issued on LP and (from what I gathered in doing research at the time) much re-issued. Unlike the Badura-Skoda Beethoven sonatas, all of Demus’ tracks were available for download – and I mined all 48 tracks.

In next week’s post, I’ll spend more time discussing Demus as an artist, and talk about some of the other versions of the WTC that are “openly available”.

Composed about 20 years apart, the two sets of 24 preludes and Fugues that constitute the two books of Johann Sebastian Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier didn’t start off as one huge collection of 48 works – in fact, the set of “24 Preludes and Fugues” composed in 1742 were not issued as a “sequel” to the original WTC of 1722. Musicologists have, however, come to combine the two sets, as they are both in the same mould – exploiting the concept that many more composers (from Chopin to moist recently François Dompierre) have followed, that of creating a set of works written in every major and minor key.

Bach's autograph fair copy bears the following title page:

The Well-Tempered Clavier,orPreludes and Fuguesthrough all the tones and semitonesboth as regards the tertia major or Ut Re Miand as concerns the tertia minor or Re Mi Fa.For the Use and Profit of the Musical Youth Desirous of Learningas well as for the Pastime of those Already Skilled in this Studydrawn up and written by Johann Sebastian Bach.p.t. Capellmeister to His Serene Highnessthe Prince of Anhalt-Cöthen, etc.and Director ofHis Chamber Music.Anno 1722.

Though the Well-Tempered Clavier was not published during Bach's lifetime, many manuscript copies were made by his pupils and copies spread steadily all over Europe with his fame. Influential musicians such as Mozart and Beethoven received manuscripts and as everyone knows, these composers in turn influenced the direction of the Western music. The works were finally published 51 years after the composer's death.

To call the individual preludes and fugues “studies” or works for students is selling these treasures short; these are masterful works for the keyboard, as varied and audacious as the variety of key signatures Bach uses.

As for the performance – it flows smoothly, pensive and at times ethereal. Look for Book II in next week’s post.

Friday, October 11, 2013

As of November 8, 2013, this montage will no longer be available on Pod-O-Matic. It can be heard or downloaded from the Internet Archive at the following address / A compter du 8 novembre 2013, ce montage ne sera plus disponible en baladodiffusion Pod-O-Matic. Il peut être téléchargé ou entendu au site Internet Archive à l'adresse suivante:https://archive.org/details/Pcast126

This week’s
contribution to “Back to Bach” is a look at a veritable cottage industry: transcribing
and arranging the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. As I eluded to in last week;s
post, Bach is – in my words – an “eco-friendly” composer, one who himself
re-used, recycled and recast many of his works and of those of his
contemporaries.

Last week, we took a peek at a pair of “reconstructions” of concertos by Bach where the
original solo instruments were changed. In this week’s montage, I propose an
“organ concerto” by Bach – in this case, not a concerto for organ and orchestra
but a concerto for solo organ – which reuses one of Vivaldi’s L'Estro Armonico
concertos for violin.

If Bach
does it, then why not others? Many composers and arrangers throughout the
years have taken a second look at some of Bach’s works, and cast them under new
light. The montage provides many settings – for small groups of players and for
full orchestra. Some of these artists have graced these pages in past
montages (Leopold Stokowski,Akio Yashiro, and even Wedny Carlos). A few words
therefore for some of the other artists featured today.

Speaking
oif cottage industries, pianist Jacques Loussier recorded several albums with a
jazz trio he baptized the “Play Bach Trio”, adapting manty of Bach’s keyboard
works (and even some organ works) for that unique 20th century
combination. If you listen closely, other than the odd embellishment, Loussier
plays these works “straight up”. His technique reminds me a lot of Glenn
Gould’s insofar as precision is concerned. The other members of the trio
play along, providing more than just jazz support. Sometimes, the bass player
gets toi carry the load. These are quite addictive!

Widor’s
great work Bach’s Memento is one organist’s tribute to Bach’s quintessential
favourites. Widor doesn’t merely copy “Sleeper’s Awake”, he brings it to the Cavaille-Coll
French Organ renaissance movement.

Many of
Bach’s solo violin sonatas and partitas are found played by violists, and the
rich texture of the violin’s first cousin gives these works added relief and
dimension. The partita for solo flute is presented today in that vein. To
compare, here is a performance of the partita as Bach intended it (URL, ISGM).

We all
remember the opening of Disnety’s original 1940 Fantasia, with Stokowski
conducting his own arrangement of the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Well,
here’s a twist for you. This montage presents an arrangement of the work by –
apparently – a Ruissian composer by the name of Paul Klenovsky. As it turns out, Tovariuch Klenovsky is merely a nom de plume for conductor and arranger Sir Henry Wood, and his
arrangekent – at times more ominous that Stoklowski’s – predates it by almost
30 years!

Also
featured, adaptations by Lucien Caillet and guitarist Liona Boyd.

Friday, October 4, 2013

As of November 3rd, 2013, this montage will no longer be available on Pod-O-Matic. It can be heard or downloaded from the Internet Archive at the following address / A compter du 3 novembre 2013, ce montage ne sera plus disponible en baladodiffusion Pod-O-Matic. Il peut être téléchargé ou entendu au site Internet Archive à l'adresse suivante:https://archive.org/details/Pcast125

This week’s
montage is the first of a set of four back- to back to back - to Bach
montages, featuring the works of the Grand Daddy of Baroque Music. We launched
the month-long Bach fest with the Tuesday Blog rerun of my two-part series onthe Brandenburg concertos, and this week’s montage and podcast, looks at a more
traditional concerto, featuring a solo instrument backed up by an orchestra.

It is
interesting to compare Johann Sebastian Bach’s work catalog to, say,
that of his contemporary Antonio Vivaldi. Both offer their fair share of
sacred vs. secular works, but Bach’s secular catalog focuses mostly on works
for a solo instrument - organ, double or single harpsichord, and string
instruments. The catalogue – all things considered – offers only a modest set of
works for orchestra (BWV 1041 to 1071), whereas the bulk of Vivaldi’s output is
dedicated to concertos, and the overwhelming majority of them are for
string instruments, and most prominently the violin.

Bach’s
violin concertos are quite few – there are the three recognized concertos (BWV
1041, 1042 and 1043), a “triple concerto” (for violin, flute and harpsichord),
and a host of reconstructed or fragmentary works. Our montage dips into both
the “straight up” and the “reconstructed” concertos.

The main
portion of the montage features a “cover to cover” performance by the Belgian
early music ensemble La Petite Bande from 1982, with its leader Sigiswald
Kuijken as soloist. Contemporary reviews of this 30-year old performance single
the disc out as probably one of the best complete set – and I whole-heatedly
agree.

To complete
the montage, I retained two “reconstructed” concertos. As we discussed in a past post, Bach made it a habit to reuse, recycle and re-cast his works
for different settings. There are in my personal collection three
different settings of what the BWV catalogue considers to be Bach’s first
keyboard concerto (his BWV 1052). We have settings for keyboard, for mandolin
and this “reconstruction” for violin. In these morphed concertos (be they
attributed to Bach himself or other composers), the recast solo instrument
rarely feels out of place, and the violin reconstruction shows off the first
movement in particular in a more favourable light than the keyboard version.

We are more
familiar with the “reconstructed” BWV 1060 violin and oboe concerto than we are
with its “official” setting – that for two keyboards. There again, the change
in solo instrument texture fits better the mood at times (the slow movement in
this case) than the original.